Hi.
It's the end of the '50s ; she's not even ten.
This being about ballet, anything about flow is important. So, I decided to let Yvonne shake the reader in her/his slippers by going free flow, stream-of-consciousness like, in the second part of the chapter.
This is what a Big 5 editor had to say about this particular chapter:
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The sudden plunge into the stream-of-consciousness of the young Yvonne is certainly effective in reminding the reader to pay attention & I really do think that your command of her voice is very confident & convincing ... As it currently stands, it’s a very compelling voice
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Just fasten your belts, à la Felix Baumgartner, hydroplane/skim over the words (I was to say "over the floor"), grasping for meaning, and you'll be safe and sound over to the other side, heavily breathing, as at the end of long solo dance, but hopefully looking for more chapters. And just remember, Jonathan Coe had a 30-page-long love scene in the Rotter's Club written in this glorious style. So, Yvonne took it easy on you.
Enjoy the ride.
_____
Remote
times, now, she found it more and more. And
it was in those remote times that she had grown her shells on, one above and
around the others, a tortoise grandly residing in her soul.
The
first shell, the innermost and the source for all others — for anyone trying to
get in touch, on some level or another, with her — the remote and untouchable
star around which everything turned, was, for her, the ballet.
She
must have been four when her mother started to take her in busses and trams to
an elderly lady located somewhere in the Beaches, who had a small studio for
children. The lady had been a corps
dancer with the Les Ballets Russes in
her youth in Paris and recalled the later reincarnation, Les
Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo led by Colonel de Basil, touring the States
in transcontinental trains during World War Two in search of an audience.
With
too many robberies around her neighborhood, the old lady had bought two huskies. Castor and Pollux they were, one patrolling
the outside and one the inside of her average-size house — built while her
husband, a bank clerk, still lived, and took care of the material interests of
the household. With their massive,
thickly-furred, unfriendly presence, they instilled a fear of dogs, especially
large ones, in the young Yvonne that would stay with her for all her life, to
the benefit of domesticated felines. That was her second shell,
as it were, at least for the dog lovers who might have wanted to get closer to
her and never did. Never would Gilbert,
her father, be able to rid her of this fright, with all their going together,
to playing areas for the dogs in the city, just for the sake of convincing his
daughter that not all canines wanted to shred you to pieces the moment they got
sight of you.
The
old teacher — she was by then in her seventies, still showing a ramrod back — would
shoo away the dogs the moment visitors were in, to tether them in a backyard
closed-in by sparse wire fence, as she had figured that lights and the movement
of people inside would keep away robbers for the duration of the visits. Also, she didn’t want dogs running amok
through her classes, bumping into students at those times, or worse. She would always wear corduroy pants for
classes, which suited well her slim carriage, of which she was proud. The large living room of the house was used
as a small dance studio, with a barre
on a side, the rest of the room being parqueted with no rugs and the little
furniture there was being carried away to the walls, wide windows generously
letting light in at any time of the year — the teacher hating having people
dance in the dark, as, she complained, it caused her headaches, too dire a
sight to contemplate, she said, dance is Apollonian, thus protected by the
light of the sun and should stay so. In
one corner, she had an upright piano on which she played the music to which the
pupils were supposed to dance or drill, with authoritarian fingers
punch-stressing the rhythm so that the young dancers would know what and when
to emphasize in their pliés, arabesques or pointes tendus, with her right hand
suspended up in the air toward them whenever she felt that a fluttering of
fingers or a flight of an arm would help their suggestion and imagery, their
butter-melting to the music.
Presiding
above the whole room was this huge elk head, decapitated and stuffed by a
taxidermist after a hunting exhibition in the North by her late husband. “He’s Jowls; don’t mind him too much; he’s
very placid these days, ” she laughed, sometimes, on her good-humored days,
adding perniciously, “he’s retired from everything, from stud too,” sotto voce
to the adults bringing in their children to her lessons, who sometimes stayed
for the duration.
Placed
against a side wall rested a bench on which all students would sit to adjust
their ballet slippers, tie them up tighter or simply retire for a short while
when too tired, or in tears from some of the comments received from the old
lady, the old hag to them in those times, which were both harsh and encouraging
at the same time. It certainly was the
“bench of tears,” as it had seen them at their worst, after hours of drills and
rehearsals that apparently didn’t seem to produce anything. “Ars longa, vita brevis,” the teacher told
them.
The
bunch who assembled here was a good one, many of the children going on to the
National Ballet’s school and some of them — true, very few of them — even to
dance with the Ballet, and the parents didn’t skimp or scrounge paying the
pretty penny involved in order to get there, as Mrs. Johnson’s hours weren’t
cheap by any means. Thus, this is where
Yvonne made many life-long acquaintances, friends and rivals, all in the same
bowl, for in this art, as in others, you can have all of them in the same
person.
Also,
this is where another shell gradually grew on her, her own body, steeled to
pain in toes and foot arches, in ankles and knees, the body of someone who had
to be ready to respond the cry of “the show must go on” and to hold the flag
high. She recalled how flexibility came
gradually as a gift of the long drills, how a split which wasn’t available
before became second-nature, drawing wows from the children in her neighborhood
who didn’t know anything of ballet or gymnastics and couldn't compete with such
apparently awesome feats. And the other girls would touch her thighs and wonder “Your
muscles are getting as hard as a boy’s; there’s no softness to them any more; aren’t
you worried?” but the shells were already on her, so such questions were
readily dismissed.
So,
when after innumerable adagios with rondes de jambes a terre at the barre, she went back limping to Mrs. Johnson’s
bench, and had to wonder also if her beauty wouldn’t be affected by what she
had just done, the beauty as seen by boys — who were the people who really
counted, the ultimate arbiters of femininity, as told in those years by her
mother — she needed all the moral reinforcement that came through other
channels, and most powerfully from Mrs. Johnson, who told them all the time, in
her voice made hoarse by classes, “Girls and boys, we’re dancing for the
ineffable, to voice our inner yearnings, not for any profit or worldly pleasure. In fact, we’re dancing beyond all this, in that
space in which poets and singers tread, and even past that, as our tool, our
body, is the most flimsy, the most temporary and perishable, and nothing is
left, except in ether, and even there there are only few and puny drops of our
dances. Except for those of us lucky
enough to be taped for TV, and this only recently. And by the way, the door is open for those
who don’t enjoy the view; I don’t want any of you or of your parents to come
over to complain that you weren’t warned.
But, I’m asking, is there anything more beautiful than a well-timed développé?” And Yvonne, she didn’t know that space in
which poets and singers treaded, as she wasn’t reading too much anyway in those
years, except for school, overwhelmed by ballet classes and the time and energy
that went to them as in a black hole, as seen by her father. “Why shouldn’t she focus on medicine, law or
even fashion?” he quizzically asked. “Well,
you told her about cerf-volants, this is one of them,
isn’t it?” her mother replied in the marital bed at night. For the benefit of any curious and doubtful
outside observer, a case in point for her having already developed pretty hard
shells, if nothing else, already by that age: at ten, she competed for entrance
in the National Ballet School in Toronto, only days after the doctors had
diagnosed a fracture line in her foot. The
only way to go through it was novocaine injections meant to freeze the area,
which she immediately and doggedly asked for, when advised by the doctors,
until she got them. So entered she the
school with flying colors, years before a Béla Károlyi and a certain Kerry
Strug would make recourse to the same medical stunt for a famous vault at the
Atlanta Olympics.
***
What
I liked first in ballet was the tutus, the tights, the slippers and the
pointes, for I didn’t know any other place with them, the girls being so light,
so without those heavy dresses and long coats that we have here in winter, that
looked like other girls, not themselves, more like flowers in a garden, but now
that I am used to it for perhaps five
years, I still think the same, those are perhaps the things which I like most
and the music, this music which flows on and on and tells you how to move with
it, so that it comes from within ourselves, as Mrs. Johnson was saying, the
steps are so easy, you just relax and let go, lift the arms as in a développé and the legs will move of
themselves, I don’t feel any strain, and I don’t have to push myself to do
things as I sometimes need to do in my studies, even the pointes come naturally
now, not that I don’t feel them afterward in my poor feet, but at the time it’s
just the pleasure of being taller and moving delicately on them, in small
points to the ground here and there, as a woodpecker pecking the ground, just
touching it, so I feel more in the air
than on the ground, and so it is in the pirouettes too, you just feel the
ground just in that single point, that you are not of it, you’re mostly above
and detached of it, or in the grands
battements one feels like a large insect, spreading thin legs in the air
and kicking it away, and then I like that in class, being four or five at the barre and doing those battements or pliés all at the same time, it’s like sharing the music with the others,
girls and boys at the barre, as
though each of us makes a small part and all the parts are put together and
there’s that feeling of one movement going over, through and over all of us,
it’s like we’re more friendly to each other, and I think the same about those pas
de trois or pas de quatre from Swan Lake in which you feel those oh so
beautiful swans moving and stepping and light kicking together, arms going from
one to the other and linked as molten together so nicely either in front or at
the back of them, and how difficult that is to do without one of them tripping
and falling and bringing the whole line of them down to the ground with her,
which would be an awful thing to happen but it certainly has happened more than
once since it was danced first all over the world, and imagine the
embarrassement of the young ladies falling flat either on their behinds or on
their noses, imagine that in a show, not at a rehearsal, and the focus they
must have to avoid that of all things, but let’s talk of something else now,
how strange some people are not to know ballet or, even more, not to like it,
when to me it shows everything beautiful, and you don’t need words for it, just
a body in good shape, or willing to move, and arms and feet that would of their
own go ahead and do a pirouette, ‘coz I guess this is just natural to all of
us, this wish to move and rotate, and feel how you’re getting dizzy but
pleasantly dizzy while doing it, and all and everything disappears around you
and-and the only thing counting is the music and your body and that desire to
link music and body with no words, and the bends and the rotations come to you
easily if you like it and after a time you don’t need teachers to show you what
and how to dance, but the music will enter your body and move all by itself,
and I feel a whoosh around me, and I know it is the air and my tutu running
around in it, and if you don’t believe it give me your hand even if you’re
older than I and you may not like this music I have on now, because will show
you the steps which come naturally with it and will rotate, and step and
advance and move back and you’ll feel what I feel, perhaps not so clear as you
haven’t learned how to dance like I did, but still it will be with you this
feeling of trying to step out of your body and move away in the room, leave
your body in a corner if it won’t follow, and follow me just with your mind and
will and that will be enough, you will be dancing even so, the tra-tra-tra and
pram-pram-pram, and skip, and skip, and round, and round, and nothing will be
easier to you then if you try it, it’s so easy, believe me, and even though
you’re saying this is for kids and not for grown-ups like you, I still know
everyone can dance, this is what I know from my first days at Mrs. Johnson,
when she told us that the dance is not only for ballet dancers, but for
everybody who wants to feel how their bodies really feel and are, and I was
probably five or six then, but I got the idea, things are not so difficult as
people around us try to make them, but they become easier if one just tries
them and steps into it, steps into a dance, and even if OK you look ridiculous
that’s only to you, others may not feel it because they don’t think the way you
may think about dance, as a difficult thing, but they are willing to try it, or
at least to imitate someone who likes to do and-and you can see it on their
faces that it’s there, in their smiles, and in their eyes and mouths open, and
if they’re too old or sick, they’ll still watch you and move with you in their
minds, raising hands as Zorba did in the movie, you know it, no? of course you
do, Anthony Quinn was the actor, what a dancer, see that wasn’t ballet, but
everyone is moved by it, and how could anyone not move or shake and make a
gesture with their hands when they see that dance and hear that music, and Mrs.
Johnson always tells us, I still go to her, even though I’m with the National’s
school now, for my parents think that a master is a master and I should
continue working with her while I still can, Mrs. Johnson she tells us, the
older children with her, that we’re like the tulips, ready to bloom, and we
better be aware that that’s going to be a short time in our lives, and to enjoy
and do what we can to have our dancing as pure and perfect as we can while the
sun is high above us, for the season is short for everyone in this art, and
like the teacher said, ballet is a life unto itself, unto, she said, you have
to eat for it, you have to sleep for it, you have to even think for it, think
about yourself being light and ethereal, that is too say lighter than air or
anything around us on earth, all those
fatty foods around us are a no-no, but now that I’m here after five, six
years, it’s like my body already rejects
them, before even temptation starts, she even told me, you, Yvonne, you may be
too athletic for classical ballet, I mean being a soloist in one, as you’re too
rounded, now, of course in a beautiful, but perhaps too muscular, way, so in
time you may want to think to move into
modern ballet, there the form is less thin and streamlined as indeed they are
and need indeed to be the swans, and your closely-cropped curly hair, which you
keep page-like also fits better with
modern things and fashions, so I listen, better to be prepared when the time
comes to take a decision, as my father told me once, the prepared make the
choices, the unprepared take the leftovers, now, you’ll excuse me, as I need to practice this piece, and you ask what
music this is, the teachers at school told us this is Bach and it’s difficult
to dance, because it has a slow movement, and it has what the older people call
gravitas, which would be earnestness
and seriousness, measure in what you do, so I need to time it very well and not
rush through it, because Bach wrote the Well-tempered
Clavier, so it must of course be well-controlled as a metronome, and calm
but firm like it, so my mind must be emptied of everything that would bring
excitement in deportment, as the teachers call it, and I must move cleanly
through the motions as I am a clock myself, a well-running, patient clock,
whose only job is to keep the time and to respect it, and you see I’m alone
doing it, there’s no one in this room or outside it who can help me holding the
pattern when I start it, I must have it in myself, and stick to it, and this is
when the loneliness in ballet comes in, you really have to stick to yourself if
you want to manage to be true to others, Mrs. Johnson told us, so many times I
feel that in our neighborhood, we’re now in Scarborough, I don’t meet too many
of the other kids anymore, perhaps they feel I’m a high-nose already from too
many ballet classes, but it’s the same with those of them who are into swimming
or hockey, all day long chauffeured by their parents to training sessions at
five in the morning or until midnight, depending when the pools or skating
rinks are open for them, but it’s true in Canada, at least for boys, hockey’s
an understood craziness, but probably not the same we can say about ballet,
isn’t it, and at times I’m concerned, as some of the kids, boys mostly but also
girls, and even at the National school, say that from ballet you don’t get as a
girl to grow too much of a breast, as you are too awfully slim, and then the
boys might not like it when the time would come to choose a sweetie,
, and
this is just for me, last night I went to the bathroom, perhaps about midnight
as I don’t like to watch the clocks, someone told me if you do, I mean watch
them, the time of your life will pass quicker for you and it’s better to leave
it alone, couldn’t sleep too well, was too full, so, when I came back I heard
Mom and Pop kind of arguing, but it was mostly Mom, asking for something, not everything came out through
their door to the corridor where I was walking back with no slippers, it’s
faster to get into bed this way, I know, mother tells me it’s not hygienic to
walk shoeless anywhere, and that is at home too, and the whispering went harder
from my parents sleeping room, and she, Mom, said, could you please me with the
small machine too, Gilbert, I’d like you to do it to me with it too, and my
father was like mumbling, like he didn’t
quite want to do it, and mother said, oh, you French, you are old world and
old-fashioned, we’re married, aren’t we, we should try this too, and this is
where I went inside my room ‘coz I had
been if anything for too long on the hallway half-listening to it, and then
their talk was shut out from me, and then I was left wondering about the it I had just heard, and then I remember
the girls at the ballet school talking during breaks about Elvis and his hip
movements and how in some of their churches this was spoken of badly on
Sundays, and why, was the question, because that movement is very similar to
when making babies, you stupid, was the answer from another of the girls,
and the one asking was full red by now,
and I remember that another day, some other girl mentioned discovering a huge
penis, you know, a large willie, she explained for those of us who’d made
inquiring faces, in one of the drawers in the night table beside her mom’s bed,
and when she pressed a button, the thing started to move and buzz, and it
showed veins and a round cap at the top, and-and, was the question, did you try
it, what do you mean by trying, did you put it down there in you, you dummy,
and then we all ran inside the classroom, ‘coz the bell had rung and the French
hour was coming, taught by that Quebecoise lady, who some of the girls said has
in fact a bad French accent, not like the one spoken in France, that is, and
the giggling on that thing stopped then, but the little machine that had been
then mentioned stayed on my mind, and now I think it may well be just what was
whispered about last night by my parents, it’s just I don’t have the courage to
rummage in my parents’ room, and I don’t think that would be right either, this
I know about it myself, and yes, lately Mom isn’t coming every Sunday with us
anymore at the church, we go to a Catholic one, even though her parents were
Anglicans, ‘coz this is what my father is, Catholic, she tells us she’s busy
and she’s making the rounds in the kitchen, but when we’re coming back the
radio is on and loud and lots of rock music fills the house, she seems the only
Mom in our Scarborough neighborhood interested in it, I don’t hear the music
coming out from their houses, but what do I know, we really don’t visit with
the neighbors, there are some Greek and Italian families around here, and I know the Greeks are Christian too, but
different from the Catholics or the Anglicans, the Italians should be OK, they
show up, many of them, at the church we’re going to, however my parents aren’t
too much into knowing the neighbors, just hello, how are you, that’s it, so
perhaps this much music helps my Mom get away from it all, as she says, from
time to time, especially with her work
in accounting, which she never liked, as she’s always been telling us at dinner,
which is boring, as she says stressing, borring, whenever the matter came up
___________
Your comments would be appreciated (here or at kitescomments AT gmail DOT com), especially if the ballet and/or the dance are your passion/thing, professionally or otherwise.
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